The Construction Marketers Blog

Posts Categorized: SEO

Yesterday, Google changed the way it displays and formats site links for any website by expanding each link to show more content within the site. Previously, a website listing would appear in the search results page and you would see 8 listings (2 columns with 4 links in each column) like this:

Since its release over 3 weeks ago Google plus has seen tremendous growth, with nearly over 20 million users already. People who are even remotely interested in search, social media and marketing have probably been spending a lot of time figuring out how best to use this new platform. This growth will probably continue once Google+ becomes available to everyone (it’s still in beta) and Google starts marketing the social network through its other widely used, and trusted, channels such as YouTube and Blogger.

Below is a graph to illustrate the tremendous growth of the platform compared to Twitter and Facebook. Yes, we could say the growth of Google+ can also be attributed to the fact that it was largely promoted and shared through these other 2 platforms which could have contributed to it’s rapid adoption but it’s still a massive difference.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is changing. Google recently changed the way it ranks and displays quality individual web pages within its results. Gone are the days where webmasters and marketers can solely rely on inserting keywords into page titles, descriptions, URL’s, headlines and the body copy in order to improve a websites optimisation. Google is getting cleverer and its getting cleverer faster. There were 500 changes and tests made to the Google algorithm in 2010 which just goes to show that SEO is no longer an obsolete task, its a constant moving living breathing machine. Marketers must pay attention or risk losing traffic and also a complete vanish of their websites in search engines.

Marketers must also now think about the overall ‘user experience’ of the site and MUST take into consideration various metrics such as Bounce Rate, Time on Site/Page, Browser Rate, Click through rate from search listings and strong social signals such as Twitter shares and Facebook Likes. Most of your websites or website uses Google Analytics so therefore Google uses the data from your Google Analytics profile to get a better picture of how your website performs and how people interact with your site.

Optimising your website and web pages for search engines is crucial in order to raise visibility and make it easy for your customers and prospects to find detailed information on your products or applications. It is now common practice that most Architects, Specifiers and Engineers turn to the web when they require specific product information, service offerings or details for an actual business.

When developing an SEO (search engine opimisation) strategy it is quite easy to focus all of your efforts solely on improving rankings alone. “I want to be #1 or #2 and that is it!”

Marketers want their websites to rank either #1 or #2 for relevant search terms to their business and oust their competition from the dizzy heights of being listed number one in Google, but with an improvement in rankings also comes additional traffic.

Why do you want to add more traffic to the top of the funnel when your website can’t convert the hundred or so visitors it currently attracts?

If your current website is failing to convert any of its traffic into some sort of measurable result (i.e. download, subscription, registration, request) then your website needs fixing first before you add any more traffic top the top of the funnel. Identify poor performing pages with high exit rates and bounce rates, test and refine the content and the design. Always ensure your pages have clear calls to action pointing visitors towards completing those goals. Read More

Well today, I noticed our Google search engine results pages looked slightly different to the normal results pages we see everyday. Introducing the Google +1 button and also results based on social sharing within your network.

I did a search in Google for ‘top tweeters in the UK’ and I got the following results page:

A Tesco superstore, I’ve decided, is a lot like Google in the sense that a superstore, as the name suggests, has a super amount of products stacked and placed neatly for us to choose from. Those products are, for the uninitiated, strategically placed (or ranked) in terms of relevance, popularity and the ability to make Tesco money.Read More

Online video usage and consumption is on the increase. Fact. Forrester Research recently reported that videos were 50 times more likely to receive an organic first page search ranking than traditional text pages. So, if you want to get some of your content onto the first page of Google very quickly then make sure it’s a video.

A quick search on the web for ‘Rainwater Harvesting Systems’ returns a mix of video, image and text based results. This is called ‘blended results’. What I want to point out here is that the video on the left (circled below) is produced by a company called ISW (Innovative Water Solutions) and yet they don’t have a single text or image based listing on the first page of Google, but the video is there driving traffic to the YouTube channel and then if viewers are wanting to know more they then have to option to visit the company website.Read More

Way back, when the web was new, building product suppliers could be forgiven for merely copying their brochures and putting them online. Since then expectations of your web site’s content have changed vastly, so cutting and pasting your brochure copy simply won’t do.

When someone visits your web page they expect to find the information they seek immediately. They won’t want to be taken through an introductory paragraph of self-congratulatory spin, nor enjoy a portrait of your smiling chairman. No, they want to cut to the chase, to find the product they’re seeking, to find the relevant supporting information and to make contact easily.

If you understand the importance of links – and anyone contemplating social media marketing simply must – then you will also appreciate that creating good quality content is the key to the whole exercise. We discussed this in the last edition of My Digital Insider which looked at Social Media Marketing for construction companies. As the social media network becomes more and more part of our daily activity and the lines of communication between business and personal life become less distinct, so the opportunities for your staff to create these links increases. Which means that – as long as those engaged in link creation understand the dangers of inappropriate or poor quality links – you can share out the job.

Here are just a few link creation ideas. You probably wouldn’t want to use them all, but this does provide a useful checklist if only to remind you that the presentation your MD gave to his chartered institute could be posted to his social networking profile or the video demonstrating the installation method of the ‘pour and roll’ roof membrane product for a major project would look great on YouTube for prospects and customers to view.